Jack Draper continued his stellar week at the 2024 Stuttgart Open with another strong showing, downing Brandon Nakashima to book his maiden ATP Tour-level final on grass.
This is Draper’s first final of this season, and it’s not surprising that it comes on the green surface. He’s one of the better players on grass, having played on it a lot growing up in the United Kingdom.
His familiarity with the surface is evident in the way he moves around the court because he’s a natural on the green. The lower bounce in Stuttgart also plays well with his very flat and aggressive style, which is only boosted by a strong serve that’s been particularly effective this week.
Nakashima has looked solid lately as well, but he’s not playing at the level that the British player showed in their semi-final match. The opening set was a fairly simple affair overall for the sixth seed, who broke his American opponent twice to take the first set 6-3.
He was dominant on his serve, hitting 8 aces and dropping only one point behind his first serve. He did drop six on his second serve, but four of those were double faults. Basically, he barely lost a point on his serve from live play.
On the return, Draper found great success by putting the ball in play and then outplaying his opponent in the rallies. He had a clear advantage in the rallies all day and wasn’t shy to attack, either.
Nakashima served fairly well but couldn’t do much if the rallies developed. Draper broke his opponent’s serve midway through to take a 4-2 lead, and after that, it was a relatively simple cruise to the finish line.
The final score was 6-3, 6-3 for the Brit, which is a pretty strong showing behind 13 aces and 35 winners. He dropped only two points behind his first serve in the entire match. That’s absurd, but that sort of level got him to an ATP 250 final.
